A student at CUNY’s Kingsborough Community College made vile anti-American and antisemitic statements online — urging his social media followers to replace fireworks with rocket-propelled grenades to celebrate Independence Day and proudly labeling himself the “Antisemite Of The Year.”
The now-private Instagram account of Faisal Alam — which was viewed by The Post — revealed a disturbing digital crusade calling for violence against America and Jews that also extended to a Mulsim advocacy group.
In one text post, found in a Story about Ramadan 2024, the 22-year-old wrote “america is just as responsible if not more responsible for this genocide against our brothers and sisters in palestine than the yahud, so if you aren’t holding the same disdain for them you hold for israel by Allah you are ignorant or a hypocrite.”
Another post from the same Story includes a meme aligning himself with Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-Yemeni lecturer turned jihadist who in 2011 became the first US citizen in history targeted and killed by a US government drone strike.
A post from December also includes a mocked-up award featuring his name and photo below the text “2023 Antisemite Of The Year” with a caption written above reading, “sorry I win folks good luck next year” and the face with tears of joy emoji.
Alam’s unsettling online campaign also included trolling a Muslim-American advocacy group, the Muslim American Leadership Alliance (MALA).
Leaders of the non-profit, which exists “to promote American heritage and American values of freedom, democracy, and pluralism,” said it was harassed online by the student who only months earlier had sought to collaborate with the group, representing himself as president of the Kingsborough Community College Muslim Student Association (MSA).
In a July 4th Instagram post, MALA wrote “a message celebrating American values of freedom and democracy” to its followers, according to the alliance’s executive director Zainab Khan.
But before long, an unknown Instagram user with the handle “fai5al346” peppered the posting with bigoted comments like “Go back to Tel Aviv and the synagogue, Yehudi,” and slamming MALA for “supporting a country (USA) that killed Muslims abroad,” the group’s leaders said.
Alarmingly, the antisemitic troll also posted a photo of himself wearing a keffiyeh and brandishing a handgun equipped with a silencer.
Another post that got Khan’s attention showed a people at a park celebrating Independence Day with the caption “this July 4th, stop using fireworks and imitating the kuffar … use RPGs instead,” the troll wrote, referencing rocket-propelled grenades and a term in the Quran for “non-believers” of the Muslim faith.
Khan said she was so disturbed by the threatening undertones of his messages that she contacted the FBI.
“This wasn’t just freedom of speech or hateful political verbiage, this is somebody that’s a danger to society,” she said of the student’s web postings in an exclusive interview.
“This is a public safety issue. I’m a political psychologist by training, that’s my day job. If I ever saw that in any other capacity or any other place or space, that person is a danger,” she said.
She shared some of the disturbing messages with the college and received a response from the school’s attorney, Beth Douglas, who wrote, “On behalf of the college, we are deeply concerned about the horrific actions by a student at our college and we are actively taking appropriate action,” pledging to notify the NYPD.
MALA’s eagle-eyed deputy director Danyal Khan recognized the Instagram troll’s username as somebody who had previously attacked the group online in response to a post acknowledging Pride Month.
Upon looking over the troll’s Instagram profile, Danyal realized the poster was Alam, a man who had repeatedly sought to explore a collaboration between MALA and Kingsborough Community College’s Muslim Student Association, of which Alam claimed to be president in an email viewed by The Post.
The KBCC MSA website does not list Alam as its president, and emails sent to the student group’s faculty advisors were not returned.
A school spokesperson told The Post in a statement, “We have been made aware of disturbing social media posts, which we have forwarded to the NYPD for investigation, and we will take the necessary steps pending the outcome of their probe,” they wrote in part, adding, “Kingsborough Community College has zero tolerance for discrimination of any kind.”
It is unclear if Alam is a current or former student of the community college.
There was no answer at the front door of an address linked to Alam through a public records search Thursday.
Text messages sent to two different phone numbers also linked to him were not answered.
Zainab said Alam “fits the profile” of a young man who was “radicalized” following the start of Israel’s war against Hamas.
Danyal agreed, calling Alam an example of “what happens when you let extremism dominate your life.”
I think he’s a perfect example of online extremism going too far, where young people who are easily influenced by what they see on social media are constantly devouring news about what’s happening in the Middle East that doesn’t entirely involve them, and then making it about them and committing their personalities to it,” he said.
Although Danyal stopped short of hoping Alam gets kicked out of KBCC, he did say “I hope he cuts ties with his hateful ways and adopts a new set of eyes and sees the world as a place where he can bring change. But if not he has to face some sort of consequences.”